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Date Posted: 14:14:51 08/01/03 Fri
Author: José Euríalo dos Reis
Subject: TASK 13

TASK 13 – “Create a good communication activity and describe it to your classmates. Say which type it is, according to LITTLEWOOD (1981).”

DESCRIBING THE ACTIVITY
The class is divided into groups of 4 students to which are given at least 3 work-cards and worksheets (about the same theme) showing people celebrating different moments related to traditional festivals around the world, like Brazilian Carnival, the Day of the Dead (Mexico), Thanksgiving and Valentine’s Day (USA), Chinese New Year, Venezian Carnival and so on.

Then, the teacher asks them to talk about that celebration (by using previous information they have or guessing from the images) and make (as a group) a two-minute presentation (based on written notes to be given to the teacher) on the theme to the whole class. Then, they are asked to talk (in groups), about some American special occasions and parties they know and comment on some aspects they know about the month of the year in that they occur, the costumes people wear, the foods and drink they use and the way they celebrate such special moments as a cultural group. In order to do that, they get more work-cards and worksheets and are invited to use relative clause of time (e.g.: Halloween is a day when children, in USA, dress up in masks and costumes, knock on people’s doors asking for candy and say them the words “trick or treat!”; Winter is the season when people in some states of the USA have snow) to share information and link the celebrations they are commenting about to the months of the civil year.

After ten minutes of group-working, the students are stimulated to share, briefly, all the information they have achieved, making a short-term presentation. Then, the teacher invite them to listen to a song (“I just called to say I love you”, by Stevie Wonder) and try to find out there some information on American traditional parties, seasons and festivals. After allowing the learners to pick the data up from the lyrics, the teacher hands out the written lyrics of the song and inform them that all the months of the year are there (clearly or metaphorically) to be found, and ask the students to work in order to identify them and comment on the likely celebration. [There, we can identify all the months of the year: “New Year’s Day” (it is January);“No chocolate covered candy hearts to give away”(it is Valentine’s Day, in February); “No first of Spring / No song to sing” (it is March, marking the start of that season); “No April rain” (it is April, of course!) and so on].

As final steps of the activity, all the groups are invited to discuss aloud about the reason why all those celebrations are mentioned there and, later, sing the song together.

CLASSIFYING THE ACTIVITY
This activity can be classified, according to Littlewood’s text (1981), as a “process Information” activity, since “learners must not only analyze information, but also argue, justify and persuade, in order to reach a common decision” (LITTLEWOOD, 1981, p.38).

BIBIOGRAPHY

LITTLEWOOD, William. Communicative activities: some general considerations. In: ________Communicative language teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981. p.16-21.

LITTLEWOOD, William. Functional communication acitivies. In: ________. Communicative activities: some general considerations. Communicative language teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981. p.22-42.

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